Daughter Of Calamity - Rosalie M. Lin Book Review

I want to sit in a dark, cabaret corner and slowly sip on the cocktail of chaos that is Daughter of Calamity by Rosalie M. Lin. I absolutely loved this book. It’s a breathtaking story that proudly stands on its own like the most beautiful woman in the club, and it steals the attention of potential suitors and rival dancers alike.

The Shanghai night is alive with the sounds of jazz spilling from the city’s many dance clubs. At the Paramount, Jingwen charms and dances with wealthy patrons, hoping to win their favor and the gifts and access that come with it. Yet, her grandmother and the Blue Dawn gang are forever a shadow hovering outside the edges of her glamorous world. Both find Jingwen’s lifestyle distasteful and hope she will follow in her grandmother’s footsteps as the gang’s magical surgeon before Shanghai eats her alive. But Jingwen finds that she is good at courting danger and searches for power to protect the version of Shanghai she loves.

This story is overwhelming, in a good way, because it’s so outrageously and beautifully descriptive. Like Shanghai’s alluring dancing girls, Lin takes the reader by the hand and pulls us through the city while sparing no details. She makes us hear the wheel of a rickshaw moving on the street, see the hazy glow of neon signs, smell the pork belly cooking at an outdoor stall, and hear the stillness of a forgotten city temple. Calamity is a cacophony of senses that puts the readers in a Shangai dreamscape where the overflowing details warp reality. Lin’s writing is addictive and poetic, and she strung me along without so much as a glance back to see if I could keep up.

Shanghai in the 1930s is a kaleidoscope warping the old and new worlds into hypnotic patterns. Lin constantly showcases how foreign powers have influenced and smothered the culture. And Jingwen is a fantastic character to move through this changing world because she’s a woman embracing the modern era while still having roots in the old ways thanks to her grandmother. Calamity is a constant clash of old and new, and I love that the lines are so blurred. Monks honor forgotten gods in their run-down temples sandwiched between dancing clubs and French patisseries. Dancers wear qipaos and fringed dresses to dance the tango while traditional folk dances are lost. Lin even makes a point to show the evolution between Jingwen and her mother, both dancers who follow the styles and makeup trends of their era. The constant clash made it feel like the world was constantly shifting underneath my feet, and it enhanced the magical realism sprinkled throughout the plot.

So much emotion was removed from Calamity, and it was done well and purposefully. Lin does not allow emotions to cloud anything, and the events unfold in a matter-of-fact manner that feels eerie and cold. As someone who actively chases books that make me cry, believe me when I tell you this numb, dispassionate perspective was dope. This is not a story to question the morality of decisions or what is considered right or wrong. The story just is, and it allows for calamity to wreak havoc on Shanghai like a detached, immortal entity should.

This story will continue to reveal new wonders the longer I sit with it. I want to bottle the thoughts and feelings brought out by this book, but it’s impossible. The story is so layered thematically that as I start to unravel one, it gets tangled with another, and I end up starting at the beginning. It’s a glamorous and deadly fever dream whose haze I can’t quite shake, and I’m fine with nursing my headache in the morning if it means I get to keep dancing with the Daughter of Calamity.

Rating: Daughter of Calamity – 10/10
-Brandee